On being Irish

I'm married to a redhead. She's not Irish. She's very fair, and freckled she definately could pass. My son's are mixed race. They could not be confused as Irish.  On their black side of the family there is an Irish great grandfather. So, that means my boys, while there appearance wouldn't suggest it, they are MORE Irish than me.

My family includes a great grandmother Bridgette Hoy, and names like Delaney, and Higgins are in that family line. I have Irish bonifides. My father's side was mostly Scottish, from the Orkney Island of Westray, and his mom it gets kind of murky. They spoke German, or was that Yiddish?  There last name was changed at Ellis Island. My paternal great grandmother had a Jewish maiden name. Oh well.  America's a salad bowl.

But there's no denying the Irish, the lyrical ethnicity. The scrappers, survivors, bar room brawlers, coffin jumpers, guilt soaked fiercely loyal maudlin drunken saps....but both sides of my family were Celts. What do they say about the Celts?  From Chesterton's poem "Ballad of the White Horse"

For the great Gaels of Ireland


Are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry,

And all their songs are sad.

My mother use to complain when there was a funeral, that the Chicago relatives would demand an open coffin. My mother was all about appearances, and felt sorry for the corpse, and believed the coffins should be screwed tight out of respect. I'm sure this was a golden rule thing. When I die, and I can't control how I look, close the lid and don't open it.  My mother was definately a lace curtain variety of Irish.  She referred to the other end of the gene pool as "those shanty louts."

About the most Irish thing we did as a kid was made a pilgrimage to South Bend to drive around the campus of Notre Dame.  This is the American Irish equivalent to a Hadj.  We drove for several hours and got lost on the black side of town, where the recently closed Studebaker plant had gone off like an economic hydrogen bomb.  The lasting image was of a very tall black man past out on the side walk, and people stepping over him confident he was not going to stand up.  "This is the home of Notre Dame" I asked increduously.  My mother seethed, "Do something Bruce!"  In retrospect this is funny to me.  Looking at it from an adults perspective, I feel for my dad. Ultimately we found the campus and got out of the car to behold "Touchdown Jesus" looming over everything.

We had brown eyes except for my sister Beth, and my mother explained this as black Irish. The survivors of the Spanish Armada who ill winds deposited on the shore of the emerald isle, and quickly deposted their Moorish seed there amongst the red headed, freckled, pale people.  Hundreds of years before sun screen.

Happy St Patricks day to all.